logadm

- manage endlessly growing log files

Synopsis

logadm

logadm [-options] logname...

Description

logadm is a general log rotation tool that is suitable for running from
cron(1M).

Without arguments, logadm reads the /etc/logadm.conf file, and for every entry found
in that file checks the corresponding log file to see if it should
be rotated. Typically this check is done each morning by an entry in
the root's crontab.

If the logname argument is specified, logadm renames the corresponding log file
by adding a suffix so that the most recent log file ends with
.0 (that is, logfile.0), the next most recent ends with .1 (that is,
logfile.1), and so forth. By default, ten versions of old log files are
kept (that is, logfile.0 through logfile.9). At the point when what would
be the eleventh file is logged, logadm automatically deletes the oldest version
to keep the count of files at ten.

logadm takes a number of options. You can specify these options on the
command line or in the /etc/logadm.conf file. The logadm command searches /etc/logadm.conf
for lines of the form lognameoptions

logname

Identifies an entry in /etc/logadm.conf. This can be a name or the pathname of the log file. If you specify a log file, rather than a name, for this field, it must be a fully qualified pathname.

options

Identifies command line options exactly as they would be entered on the command line. This allows commonly used log rotation policies to be stored in the /etc/logadm.conf file. See EXAMPLES.

If options are specified both in /etc/logadm.conf and on the command line, those in the /etc/logadm.conf file are applied first. Therefore, the command line options override those in /etc/logadm.conf.

Log file names specified in /etc/logadm.conf may contain filename substitution characters such as * and ?, that are supported by csh(1).

Two options control when a log file is rotated. They are: -s
size -p period.

When using more than one of these options at a time, there
is an implied and between them. This means that all conditions must
be met before the log is rotated.

If neither of these two options are specified, the default conditions for rotating
a log file are: -s1b-p1w, which means the log
file is only rotated if the size is non-zero and if at least
1 week has passed since the last time it was rotated.

By specifying -pnever as a rotation condition, any other rotation conditions are
ignored and logadm moves on to the expiration of old log files.
By specifying -pnow as a rotation condition, a log rotation is forced.

Unless specified by the -o, -g, or -m options, logadm replaces the
log file (after renaming it) by creating an empty file whose owner, group
ID, and permissions match the original file.

Three options control when old log files are expired: -A age -C
count -S size. These options expire the oldest log files until a particular
condition or conditions are met. For example, the combination -C5 and the -S10m options expires old log files until there are no more than 5
of the files and their combined disk usage is no more than 10
megabytes. If none of these options are specified, the default expiration is -C10 which keeps ten old log files. If no files are to
be expired, use -C0 to prevent expiration by default.

logadm stores timestamps in the file /var/logadm/timestamps. For users of previous versions
of logadm, the utility automatically moves timestamps from /etc/logadm.conf, their previous repository, to /var/logadm/timestamps.

Options

The following options are supported:

-apost_command

Execute the post_command after renaming the log file. post_command is passed to sh-c.

Specify post_command as a valid shell command. Use quotes to protect spaces or shell metacharacters in post_command.

This option can be used to restart a daemon that is writing to the file. When rotating multiple logs with one logadm command, post_command is executed only once after all the logs are rotated, not once per rotated log.

-Aage

Delete any versions that have not been modified for the amount of time specified by age.

Specify age as a number followed by an h (hours), d (days), w(weeks), m (months), or y (years).

-bpre_command

Execute pre_command before renaming the log file. pre_command is passed to sh-c.

Specify pre_command as a valid shell command. Use quotes to protect spaces or shell metacharacters in the pre_command.

This option can be used to stop a daemon that is writing to the file. When rotating multiple logs with one logadm command, pre_command is executed only once before all the logs are rotated, not once per rotated log.

-c

Rotate the log file by copying it and truncating the original logfile to zero length, rather than renaming the file.

-Ccount

Delete the oldest versions until there are not more than count files left.

If no expire options (-A, -C, or -S) are specified, -C10 is the default. To prevent the default expire rule from being added automatically, specify -C0 .

-email_addr

Send error messages by email to mail_addr.

As logadm is typically run from cron(1M), error messages are captured by cron and mailed to the owner of the crontab.

This option is useful if you want the mail regarding error messages to go to another address instead. If no errors are encountered, no mail message is generated.

-Ecmd

Execute cmd to expire the file, rather than deleting the old log file to expire it.

cmd is passed it to sh-c. The file is considered expired after cmd completes. If the old log file is not removed or renamed by the cmd, logadm considers it for expiration the next time that it runs on the specified log file. If present, the keyword $file is expanded in the specified cmdto the name of the file being expired.

This option is useful for tasks such as mailing old log files to administrators, or copying old log files to long term storage.

-fconf_file

Use conf_file instead of /etc/logadm.conf.

This option allows non-root users to keep their own logadm configuration files.

-Ftimestamp_file

Use timestamp_file instead of /var/logadm/timestamps to store logadm timestamps.

-ggroup

Create a new empty file with the ID specified by group, instead of preserving the group ID of the log file.

Specify group by name or by numeric group ID, as accepted by chgrp(1).

This option requires the ability to change file group ownership using the chgrp(1) command.

-h

Print a help message that describes logadm's options.

-l

Use local time rather than the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) when naming rotated log files (see the discussion of percent sequences in the templates supplied with the -t option).

-mmode

Create a new empty file with the mode specified by mode, instead of preserving the mode of the log file.

Use cmd to rename the log file. If the keyword $file is specified, it is expanded to the name of the log file. Similarly, the keyword $nfile is expanded to the new name of the log file. The $nfile keyword is only available with commands provided with the -M option. After the command completes, the log file is replaced by the rotate file. The default cmd is “/bin/mv$file$nfile”.

-n

Print the actions that the logadm command will perform without actually performing them.

This option is useful for checking arguments before making any changes to the system.

It is important to remember, however, that since log rotating actions are only printed with this option, logadm might not find files that need expiring, but if run without the -nlogadm might create a file that needs expiring by performing the log rotating actions. Therefore, if you see no files being expired with the -n option, files still might be expired without it.

-N

Prevent an error message if the specified logfile does not exist. Normally, logadm produces an error message if the log file is not found. With -N, if the log file doesn't exist logadm moves on to the expire rules (if any) and then to the next log file (if any), without creating the empty replacement log file.

-oowner

Create the new empty file with owner, instead of preserving the owner of the log file.

Specify period as a number followed by d for days, h for hours, w for weeks, m for months (30 days) or y for years. There are also two special values for period: now and never. “-pnow” forces log rotation. “-pnever” forces no log rotation.

-Ptimestamp

Used by logadm to record the last time the log was rotated in /var/logadm/timestamps.

This option uses timestamp to determine if the log rotation period has passed. The format of timestamp matches the format generated by ctime(3C), with quotes around it to protect embedded spaces. timestamp is always recorded in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) timezone.

-r

Remove any entries corresponding to the specified logname from the /etc/logadm.conf.

-Rcmd

Run the cmd when an old log file is created by a log rotation. If the keyword $file is embedded in the specified command, it is expanded to the name of the old log file just created by log rotation.

This option is useful for processing log file contents after rotating the log. cmd is executed by passing it to sh-c. When rotating multiple logs with one logadm command, the command supplied with -R is executed once every time a log is rotated. This is useful for post-processing a log file (that is, sorting it, removing uninteresting lines, etc.). The -a option is a better choice for restarting daemons after log rotation.

-ssize

Rotate the log file only if its size is greater than or equal to size.

Specify size as a number followed by the letter b for bytes, k for kilobytes, m for megabytes, or g for gigabytes.

-Ssize

Delete the oldest versions until the total disk space used by the old log files is less than the specified size.

Specify size as a number followed by the letter b for bytes, k for kilobytes, m for megabytes, or g for gigabytes.

-ttemplate

Specify the template to use when renaming log files.

template can be a simple name, such as /var/adm/oldfile, or it can contain special keywords which are expanded by logadm and are in the form $word. Allowed sequences are:

$basename

The log file name, without the directory name

$dirname

The directory of the file to be rotated

$domain

Expands to the output of domainname

$file

The full path name of the file to be rotated

$isa

Expands to the output of uname-p

$machine

Expands to the output of uname-m

$n

The version number, 0 is most recent, 1 is next most recent, and so forth

To actually have the dollar sign character in the file name, use $$. Any percent sequences allowed by strftime(3C) are also allowed, for example, %d expands to the day of the month. To actually have a percent sign character in the file name, use %%. Both dollar-sign keywords and percent sequences can appear anywhere in the template. If the template results in a pathname with non-existent directories, they are created as necessary when rotating the log file.

If no -t option is specified, the default template is $file.$n. Actual rotation of log files, where each version is shifted up until it expires is done using the $n keyword. If the template does not contain the $n keyword, the log file is simply renamed to the new name and then the expire rules, if any, are applied.

-Tpattern

Normally logadm looks for a list of old log files by turning the template (specified with the -t option) into a pattern and finding existing files whose names match that pattern. The -T option causes the given pattern to be used instead.

This option is useful if another program fiddles with the old log file names, like a cron job to compress them over time. The pattern is in the form of a pathname with special characters such as * and ? as supported by csh(1) filename substitution.

-v

Print information about the actions being executed in verbose mode.

-V

Validate the configuration file.

This option validates that an entry for the specified logname exists in the /etc/logadm.conf file and is syntactically correct. If logname is not specified, all entries in the configuration file are validated. If a logname argument is specified, the command validates the syntax of that entry. If the entry is found, it is printed and the exit value of the command is true. Otherwise the exit value is false.

-wentryname

Write an entry into the config file (that is, /etc/logadm.conf) that corresponds to the current command line arguments. If an entry already existed for the specified entryname, it is removed first. This is the preferred method for updating /etc/logadm.conf, because it prevents syntax errors. The entryname is an argument to an invocation of logadm. entryname might be chosen as something easy to remember or it can be the pathname of the log file. If a pathname, rather than a name is used, it must be a fully qualified pathname.

If no log file name is provided on a logadm command line, the entry name is assumed to be the same as the log file name. For example, the following two lines achieve the same thing, keeping two copies of rotated log files:

Compress old log files after all other commands have been executed. count of the most recent log files are left uncompressed, therefore making the count most recent files easier to peruse. Use count of zero to compress all old logs.

The compression is done with gzip(1) and the resulting log file has the suffix of .gz.

Operands

The following operands are supported:

logname

Identifies the name of the entry in /etc/logadm.conf. If the log file name is specified in the logname field, it is assumed that logname is the same as the actual log file name.

Examples

Example 1 Rotating a File and Keeping Previous Versions

The following example rotates the /var/adm/exacct/proc file, keeping ten previous versions in /var/adm/exacct/proc.0
through /var/adm/exacct/proc.9.

Tell logadm to copy the file and truncate it.

% logadm -c /var/adm/exacct/proc

Example 2 Rotating syslog

The following example rotates syslog and keeps eight log files. Old log files
are put in the directory /var/oldlogs instead of /var/log:

% logadm -C8 -t'/var/oldlogs/syslog.$n' /var/log/syslog

Example 3 Rotating /var/adm/sulog and Expiring Based on Age

The following entry in the /etc/logadm.conf file rotates the /var/adm/sulog file and expires
any copies older than 30 days.

/var/adm/sulog -A 30d

Example 4 Rotating Files and Expiring Based on Disk Usage

The following entry in the /etc/logadm.conf file rotates the /var/adm/sulog file and expires
old log files when more than 100 megabytes are used by the sum
of all the rotated log files.

/var/adm/sulog -S 100m

Example 5 Creating an Entry that Stores the Logfile Name

This example creates an entry storing the log file name and the
fact that we want to keep 20 copies in /etc/logadm.conf, but the -pnever
means the entry is ignored by the normal logadm run from root's crontab every
morning.

% logadm -w locallog /usr/local/logfile -C20 -p never

Use the following entry on the command line to override the -pnever option:

% logadm -p now locallog

Example 6 Rotating the apache Error and Access Logs

The following example rotates the apache error and access logs monthly to filenames
based on current year and month. It keeps the 24 most recent copies
and tells apache to restart after renaming the logs.

This command is run once, and since the -w option is specified, an
entry is made in /etc/logadm.conf so the apache logs are rotated from now
on.

This example also illustrates that the entry name supplied with the -w
option doesn't have to match the log file name. In this example, the
entry name is apache and once the line has been run, the entry
in /etc/logadm.conf can be forced to run by executing the following command:

% logadm -p now apache

Because the expression matching the apache log file names was enclosed in quotes,
the expression is stored in /etc/logadm.conf, rather than the list of files that
it expands to. This means that each time logadm runs from cron
it expands that expression and checks all the log files in the resulting
list to see if they need rotating.

The following command is an example without the quotes around the log name
expression. The shell expands the last argument into a list of log
files that exist at the time the command is entered, and writes an
entry to /etc/logadm.conf that rotates the files.

See Also

Notes

When logadm applies expire conditions (supplied by the -A, -C, and -S options), it
deletes files, the oldest first, until the conditions are satisfied. If the template
used for naming the old logs contained $n or $N, logadm picks
the highest value of $n or $N found in the old log
file names first. If the template used is something else, logadm uses the
modification time to determine which files to expire first. This may not be
the expected behavior if an old log file has been modified since it
was rotated.

Depending on log file sizes and number of log files, log file
rotations can be very time-consuming.

By default, logadm works in UTC. Therefore, all entries written to the /etc/logadm.conf
file (see logadm.conf(4)) will have a UTC timestamp. Users can use the -l option
to set logadm to local time.

The -f and -F options can specify the same file, in which case
logadm reverts to the same behavior as in prior releases. That is, timestamps
are written to the configuration file.